In their silence Indian cattle offer an example which the cultivator does not follow. Students in our colleges read Gray's Ode, wherein the lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, and say to the Professor, "Sir, what is lowing?" Neither ox nor cow lows in India. Their grunting note is seldom heard and does not carry. An English cow fills the narrow green field spaces with her fine voice as easily as a singer fills a concert room, but the Indian herd, returning to the village, drifts across the wide gray plain silent as the dust-cloud that accompanies them. The herdsman is a vocalist. Not one European in a hundred can follow his song. It begins nowhere in particular and can be broken off short or continued indefinitely ad lib.; it is always in a minor key, and has falsetto subtleties in it that baffle our methods of notation. Written down, it seems to want form, but, to be fair, so do most rustic songs.
The talk is easier, for the peasant talks a good deal in a loud heavy voice. When his women folk walk with him, they follow respectfully an ordained number of paces behind, and he flings his conversation over his shoulder. A common gibe of Anglo-Indians is that the talk is always about two things,—money or food, and there is some truth in this. Sometimes women are the topic, but then the speech is not so loud, shoulder inclines to shoulder, and heads roll with chuckling laughter. In the talk of very poor people there is a curious habit of endless repetitions. A company of old women will get through three miles in a discussion whether two or three annas were demanded by the dealer and whether one and a half anna was too much to pay. This, indeed, is rather too coherent and dramatic an example of a talk topic. I have often followed such a group, wondering when the over-chewed cud would be swallowed down in silence.
THE OILMAN'S OX
In Europe we speak of a monotonous life of labour as a mill-horse round, although the mill-horse has been dead for many years. Even the horse threshing machine, which was so delightful to drive when I was a child, seems to be abolished in favour of one of the steam machines now "huzzin' an' maazin' the blessed feealds wi' the Divil's oan team." But in India a phrase of this kind is quick and lively. The oilman's ox stands as the accepted type of a weary toiler. They say in pity of a man or woman overburdened with labour or domestic cares, "An oilman's ox!" An over-worked servant asks ironically, "What business has an oilman's ox to stand still?" The beast lives at home, and seldom goes abroad, but since he is condemned to a continuous pacing round the oil-mill they say: "The oilman's ox is always fifty miles from home." As an answer to casuistry and super-subtle argument, a popular phrase says, "My ox hasn't read logic," and comes from a conversation held between a learned Hindu logician and an oilman.
THE PERSIAN WHEEL
"Why," asks the philosopher, "do you hang a bell on your bullock's neck?"
"In order that I may hear that the mill is going."
"So, when the bell tinkles, the mill goes, eh?"